'Personas' by BK Lim - 3 Men and some tears

Sunny Pang talks about his child and marriage with his
girlfriend Michelle through drawing a parallel with a role he played in a
sgement ‘Lucky Seven’ in which he was in a relationship with a girl called
Michelle as well. He sniffles every few sentences and looks on the brink of
tearing but restrains himself and delivers an all-too-familiar broken-voiced
monologue in sentences strategically truncated for dramatic effect.

Yet something was withholding me from succumbing myself to
emotionality of it. Something about the pretext of the film and how the
characters (who are actors) were made to be in a situation of confession.

Personas, a feature-length film by BK Lim boldly stretches
the conventional limits of the ‘interview’ and bases an entire film on that.
Essentially, it is getting 3 men to ‘bare it all’ for the camera, not
physically but emotionally and spiritually. What seems to justify the idea of
hearing 3 men pour out them souls randomly is the fact that they are all actors
– people used to emotional demonstration for the camera.

The movie nicely covers 3 bands of life experiences. An
earthly-looking Jerry Hoh in his 40s, an intense-looking Sunny Pang in his 30s
and a restless-looking Nicholas Bloodworth in his 20s, still with a fluttering
spirit and a rebellious streak. By putting across the film in monochrome black
and white, we are made to focus on their voices and the nuances in their
delivery (though some were not that nuanced). Not to forget their individual
stories as well.

Jerry Hoh’ chapter speaks of a stern generation of parents
who ruled their children with draconian showings. In him is a voice of calm,
mature reflection masking what are colourful, dramatic episodes with his
‘brutal’ mother.Sunny Pang’s chapter is
pregnant with emotional extremes and life and death issues. Between a suicide
and a new-born baby, the overhanging sense of guilt and remorse makes it hard
to differentiate between the two epsiodes. Nicholas Bloodworth’s anecdotes
speak of growing pains and his struggles as a young actor. While his
rebellious, Gen-Y ways alienate the mature audience sitting in the theatre, his
account is at least reasonably honest.

The composite of these stories make an interesting mosaic of
life in its various temperaments, making us sail along with the ups and the
downs of the stories. However, for making the audience sit through 80 minutes
of raw general life accounts, a film like this needed more than the premise of
experimentation to be substantial. Indeed, Personas had an interesting premise
to run an experiment like this – to explore the fine line between acting and an
honest display with people who act for a living. It would have been interesting
to watch and critically find the line that divides when the actor is hamming it
up for the camera and when the actor is simply being himself. However, the film
tended to settle down too easily onto the good end of honesty spectrum and it
resembled a collage of video interviews from a self-help group.

So begs the question: how far should the director manipulate
an experiment like this to bring about a more substantial outcome? It is
difficult to answer this. A more heavy-handed approach may have produced
something more pointed but one-dimensional. A light-handed approach in this
case produced something a little scattered.It sometimes feel like this film is just a
homage to the three actors who work so hard for the Singapore screens.

While I can say I liked the accounts of Jerry Hoh and
Nicholas Bloodworth more, they were as good as they got. Sunny Pang’s dramatic
excesses however provided a more interesting point of contention. While the
perfectly-timed nose sniffles and facial twitching was annoying, he does bring
to attention what could be the overriding purpose of the film, to make an actor do
sometimes the hardest thing, not act.

BK Lim, the director, with the actors after the screening of 'Personas'